Compelling recreations and poignant first hand accounts bring to life the Civil War battle author Shelby Foote referred to as "a cauldron of pure hell." Shiloh, fought in south central Tennessee in April 1862, was the first large titanic battle of the war. The Union victory produced the kind of casualties the United States had never experienced, and was a harbinger of the carnage and horror that was to come. The staggering casualties of more than 23-thousand Union and Confederate soldiers sent shockwaves into every home in America,. After Shiloh, it was written, "the South never smiled."